The Perry woman whose car landed upside down in freezing ditch water Wednesday afternoon was very lucky to be rescued as quickly as she was, according to the Dallas County Sheriff’s office, because hypothermia can be deadly in such circumstances.
Marvyn Balgas, 20, of Perry was entering Minburn from the east in dense fog on County Road F31 about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday when the 2012 Nissan Altima she was driving left the roadway, rolled into the water-filled right of way on the southwest side of the curve, overturned among the trees and began to fill with ice water.
In a report on the accident, Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Andrew Lovan said that “fog was extremely dense” at the time and contributed to the accident. “Marvyn was attempting to follow the vehicle ahead of her,” Lovan said, “when it slowed as it attempted to navigate the curve on 195th Street. As it did so, Marvyn was unable to slow in time due to visibility issues, and in order to avoid impact, entered the ditch on the far side of the curve.”
Lovan reported a passerby stopped to render aid and contact law enforcement for further assistance.
“It was actually a reserve deputy who found the accident and called 911,” said Dallas County Chief Depurt Sheriff Adam Infante. “A deputy and a witness were the first to get in the water and then another deputy. They ended up having to break the window to get the door open because the door was stuck.”
Lovan said Balgas “did not to appear to sustain injuries other than exposure from being soaked in cold water in the flooded ditch.” She was transported to Mercy Medical Center West Lakes by Dallas County EMS.
Hypothermia occurs when the human body loses heat faster than it can produce heat, and the dangerously low body temperature can rapidly lead to death, according to doctors. Hypothermia is particularly dangerous in water, which is very conductive, and 60-degree water can kill a healthy person in minutes. The Minburn ditch water was closer to 30 degrees.
“She was frozen,” Infante said. “I don’t know whether she was hypothermic but if I had to guess, I’d say she was. She was stuck in the water for a while. She was soaked when the deputies broke the window and pulled her out.”
Balgas was not licensed to drive a motor vehicle, Infante said. The vehicle she was operating was registered to Felix Reyes Ramirez of Perry.
“Our investigation concluded she didn’t see that the road had turned because of fog,” Infante said. “She tried to stop. You could see that from the marks on the side of the road and the road itself. She was just traveling too fast in the weather conditions, but she couldn’t see anything.”
The Dallas County Sheriff’s office was assisted at the scene by the Minburn First Responders and the Dallas County EMS.
Another near miss occurred near Dawson in last Saturday’s freezing rain and wind when a man was reported lying in the middle of F Avenue.
Rodrigo Rodriguez, 46, of unknown address was found “conscious but not alert or responding” in the 14000 block of F Avenue about 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Infante said. He was transported to the Dallas County Hospital, where he was found to have a dangerously low body temperature. The normal body temperture for humans is 98.5 degrees.
“He was soaked because it was raining, and he’d been rained on,” Infante said. “He did have signs of an assault, so the deputy decided to transport him to the hospital. It’s a good thing he did because when they got to the hospital, they told us Mr. Rodriguez’s body termperature was only 83 degrees.”
The first symptom of hypothermia is shivering, according to doctors, which is the body’s effort to produce heat from rapid muscular shaking. When the body’s temperature drops to 95 degrees or below, dizziness and disorientation begin, and the shivering stops.
At 91 degrees one’s cognitive abilities drop off, and one experiences amnesia. At this temperature, blood circulation to the arms and legs slows as the body tries to concentrate its heat around the vital organs — the brain, heart and lungs. The heart rate becomes slow, intermittent and weak. Consciousness is typically lost at about 88 degrees, according to doctors.
At the Dallas County Hospital “they did their best to warm him up,” Infante said, “and I don’t think they could do everything, so they sent him to Des Moines. He was basically hypothermic. I guess it took hours and hours to get him back up to temperature.”
There was some mystery around the circumstances bringing Rodriguez to be found lying in the middle of F Avenue in freezing rain on a Saturday morning, a mystery the victim himself could not dispel.
“He was very drunk,” Infante said plainly. “He was extremely intoxicated. There was a vehicle located not far from where he was, registered to somebody that he knows, but he wasn’t able to fill in the gap. He was basically really drunk and passed out in the middle of the road, and it started raining is what I think happened. That’s what I think happened, but who knows?”
